For a large group of persons, intermittent catheterisation is a daily-life procedure that takes place several times a day. Typically, catheters for intermittent catheterisation are used by people suffering from urinary incontinence or by disabled individuals like para- or tetraplegics who may have no control permitting voluntary urination, and for whom catheterisation may be the way of urinating. Using an intermittent catheter, the bladder may be drained through a natural or artificial urinary canal.
The availability of catheter assemblies, which are compact and discrete to transport and dispose of, in addition to being easy to use, even for individuals with reduced dexterity, significantly improves quality of life for a large group of individuals. “Compact Female®” is a compact catheter, as described above, and is produced by Coloplast A/S.
In some situations, a user may wish to use a catheter with a urine bag connected to it, for example when a patient in a wheelchair is unable to move from the wheelchair to the toilet. Urine bags are typically made from sheets of a foil material joined along the edges.
The thickness of the urine bag is therefore very small, but due to the plane dimensions of the urine bag, it is rather indiscrete. The filled urine bag may be transported to the closest disposal bin or it may be emptied into the toilet. Draining the bag, however, may be difficult, due to the anti-reflux valve, so the bag has to be torn open and the urine poured out. This action may obviously easily become messy and the empty bag may be wet and unhygienic to hold in a handbag.
Thus, there is still a need for an easy and non-messy way of emptying of a urine bag and dispose of it.